Both political parties in the U.S. are coalitions. The Democrats include persons who believe government has a role in setting the direction of the economy and those who want government to control the economy, including socialists. Republicans include people who believe government has a more modest role in setting the direction of the economy and conservatives who fear a powerful government. The Democrats are labelled as leftists and the Republicans as rightists.

Fascism is always described as far right when it should be described as far left because from its start in Italy and Germany socializing the economy was its intent. Communism until then claimed to be international not national. Stalin was a Georgian, not a Russian. The Communist party in Germany, in its struggle for power with the Nazis, which stands for national socialist party, argued that it was rightist. The notion that it was a rightist party was simply German Communist propaganda that intellectuals around the world bought hook, line, and sinker. Mussolini had been a communist until he decided that the road to power was to nationalize socialism. National socialism in Germany and Italy wisely tolerated a large private sector because socializing the private sector would have brought disaster to their economies, resulting in the deaths of millions of people as it did in the USSR during its first two decades.

To be far right, one must be for minimum government. Authoritarianism is not rightist; it is leftist. Both Democrats and Republicans have since the 1930s have been increasingly interventionist with the consequent growth of government and its entry into areas where government has never gone before. Only the Tea Party Republicans oppose these tendencies. Perhaps it is time for three parties, including a conservative party on the right.

The present Communist regime in China calls itself communist but it is really a national socialist regime. It is an authoritarian state embracing a large socialist sector and a large capitalist sector which it tolerates because the private sector is its only source of dynamic economic growth. It does not pretend to have international socialism as its goal as Lenin and Trotsky did.

Socialism in theory can be democratic not authoritarian but democratic socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried. It has to become authoritarian to survive or revert to capitalism as in Sweden. The Soviet Union and Cuba proved that a purely socialist state is unsustainable.

Politics in the US has clear tendencies to centralized authority and socialism. The left of the Democratic Party in the US has socialist goals. Like the Nazis and fascists, it has to rely on the private sector to sustain growth but its uses controls just as Hitler and Mussolini did to bend the private sector to help achieve its social goals. It is asserting increased authority of the executive. It increased business regulation, defined what health insurance policies must cover, conducted a war on fossil fuels, demanded that health insurance follow the executive’s preferences, etc.

[An] extensive argument for balanced trade, and a program to achieve balanced trade is presented in Trading Away Our Future, by Raymond Richman, Howard Richman and Jesse Richman. “A minimum standard for ensuring that trade does benefit all is that trade should be relatively in balance.” [Balanced Trade entry]

Journal of Economic Literature:

[Trading Away Our Future] Examines the costs and benefits of U.S. trade and tax policies. Discusses why trade deficits matter; root of the trade deficit; the “ostrich” and “eagles” attitudes; how to balance trade; taxation of capital gains; the real estate tax; the corporate income tax; solving the low savings problem; how to protect one’s assets; and a program for a strong America....

Atlantic Economic Journal:

In Trading Away Our Future Richman ... advocates the immediate adoption of a set of public policy proposal designed to reduce the trade deficit and increase domestic savings.... the set of public policy proposals is a wake-up call... [February 17, 2009 review by T.H. Cate]